OWNERSHIP: DANGER COLLECTIVE RECORDS

A little about 'Ownership'. Ownership is a series dedicated to owners/founders alike who run great brands, labels, companies, and everything in between. There's just one criteria, they put quality over everything.

It's only a matter of time. As you slowly get into the world of music that won't be labeled, you will start noticing a few things; the music gets better and better, and even more so, the record labels that dedicate their time and love to permanently capture this music. There are only a few out there, well a few that do the job right, and Danger Collective Records is one of them. Spend some time on Youtube and like I said, it's only a matter of time till you come across a band who's under Danger.

It took us two years. One year of listening to the bands under danger without noticing and another year seeing the Danger Collective name till it finally clicked. Who is this record label and why is every band I like under them? Well, it all comes down to one dude, Reed. The owner of Danger Collective Records, is the one responsible for all this great work. Single-handedly curating and putting together some of the best west coast bands.

Because we needed to know more about the label, of course, we got in contact with them and Reed was more than kind! We spoke a little and quickly picked a time to chat all about Danger. Read below.

Yo! sorry, just getting home from work. Do you have some time right now?

Yeah man! No worries, totally cool!

I'm tired of full time work. Just want to focus on the blog and skating.

I definitely feel that I've been trying to skate more myself now that there's a park literally next door to where I work haha

That's sick..weather is great out there too.

Yeah it's always really nice out here so I don't have an excuse.

Haha so, you work full time for danger? I'm sure that takes a good amount of time.

So yeah for the past year I've just been working the label full time. I was actually going to school in New York at the New School but I just honestly wasn’t invested in that and couldn't make friends haha so I moved back to Los Angeles and just started doing the label full time.

I was actually there in town meeting with some people but I was at another show and couldn't make it in time sadly.But yeah so bummed I missed that

That would've have been awesome. It was the first show we ever put together. It was blast to have been able to do it with surf curse.

They're so sick and that's rad it was your first show. Still one of my all time favorite bands.

Same here man. Speaking of them and how good they are. The whole danger collective roster is pretty stacked. You have really good taste in music.

Aw thanks man yeah the roster is just all my favorite bands so it's pretty cool that I get to work with and release everything I'm into.

What was that like? Building the label, band by band? And which was the first band you worked with?

I guess thinking about it the first band on the label was Casinos which I was in at the time but we started with Bobby T. And The Slackers(Robert now makes music under BOYO), Franky Flowers, and Hollows which is now Slow Hollows. So yeah those were our main bands at first and we all became good friends so it was really a great start. We just started building it up step by step and working with more bands.

Mainly cassette and digital releases at first but now we do it all with vinyl, cassette, cd, etc.

So you were almost either directly or indirectly involved with all of them. I feel like that's the only way to do it; creating friendships, rather than a business deal. Casinos is killer by the way!

Yeah exactly. We really didn't know how to do it so we just were all friends learning together and thanks I really appreciate that!

Does the label help with any of the recording process with bands too?

Umm, not really but I know Jackson has played drums for BOYO on the Machines EP but other that not really. Most of the time we get albums after they have been recording and we aren't ever sticklers about certain songs or anything so we like our artists having total control of that.

I'm not much of a producer or anything although I've recorded with Casinos and Slow Hollows.

Ah I see..they definitely sound like they got their sound down.Quick question. Perfect hair forever and p.h.f is the same group right?

Yeah they just go by P.H.F. now

Ah okay..I thinks that's what confused me. That's another solid group.I remember listening to some of these bands before buriedmuse was a thing.But then again we are only 2 years old.

Oh no way that's awesome! Yeah Joe is sick that was one of the first artists we worked with not from our Los Angeles and now we have put out a bunch of his tapes.

Yeah! Honestly, alot of the bands under danger are really successful over youtube. Like slow hollows, surf curse, and p.h.f. that's how we found out about danger collective records. Just so many great bands under same label.

The you tube community really adapted to these bands.

Yeah we've noticed that too and it's super crazy how much that's helped with so many of our bands.

Was that something unintentional?

Yep. We don't really upload music there although our digital distro does that now,But a lot of people find out about it from that. Also stumble on tapes was super helpful in getting our artists up there, they're also super good when it comes to music discovery.

What are some future plans for danger? I feel like it's a really good platform right now to become even bigger.

I guess our plans right now are to continue putting out the music we like and just expanding with bigger distribution and coverage for our artists. I've met a lot of amazing people in the last year who have helped us and are continuing to help push us to the next level.If that makes sense.

Complete sense. It's very cool seeing a small label grow successfully.Do you think danger will cater to a certain sound? Or is it more just what you like?

I think right now we don't have a certain sound we are trying to curate it to or like cater to its mostly just releasing what we like. Myself and the other guys listen a lot of stuff and are really open to releasing a lot different types of music.

just sort of whatever we are feeling haha

That's kinda the vibe we're going with right now as well. Music we like, so it's great seeing labels COMMITTING to their taste.

Reed, thanks for taking your time out to make this happen and giving us the inside scoop!